February 18, 2010

As I delve into the reading (finally), our protagonist of the story is an Australian girl, Lou(ise), who has come to Illinois as part of an school exchange program. Her life in Australia is quite sad — awful, deadbeat parents, evil sisters who embarrass her and try to belittle her every chance they get. It’s a pretty sad description of her home life— and I’m sure I don’t know the half of it yet (flashbacks come randomly), but nonetheless, she has come to America for hopes of escaping a miserable future in Sydney. The family she’s staying with is quite the opposite of her biological family –they’re educated, successful, well-mannered, and genuinely kind. Lou comes from an entirely different place and the family is so curious to understand her life, but Lou won’t let them in. Lou is distant and bitchy; she’s polite mot of the time and sure, it’s understandable that she’s still adjusting to her new life, but it comes apparent that she greatly exaggerated herself on her exchange application, so the family was definitely not expecting the Lou that arrived.

Lou kind of irritates me thus far and she seems extremely ungrateful, despite coming from such a darker place. It’s still the beginning of the book though, hopefully she get’s her act together, but she’ll probably end up getting into a lot of trouble. Maybe I’ll end up liking her at some point, but she’s really pretentious right now. There is huge room for charachter growth and development, and as of right now the reader isn’t informed too much about her past, how she got this way, how/why she’s here. So many questions still!